South End parking request at odds with cyclists

Martin B. Cassidy

Updated 10:21 pm, Monday, January 6, 2014

STAMFORD -- Along with a surge of construction activity at the Harbor Point complex has come a more intense competition for neighborhood residents to find on-street parking near the condominium complex at 256 Washington Blvd., Carol Ann McClean said.

A bicycle lane created in 2009 as part of an overhaul of the street network by Building and Land Technology is regularly occupied by parked vehicles, some of them commuters at the nearby Stamford rail station and nearby rental units, McClean said.

McClean said residents along the street should have priority over others to use the on-street parking.

"All we're asking is that we can park in front of our home as many, many people do in Stamford," McClean said. "We live there, and we're entitled to that."

The city's traffic engineering bureau will hear opinions Tuesday night on whether Washington Boulevard residents should get their own residential parking permit zone on the west side of the road between Pulaski and Atlantic streets, City Traffic Engineer Mani Poola said.

A required survey of area residents done this fall by the city found enough support for the request to have the public hearing, Poola said. The hearing will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the fourth floor cafeteria of the Stamford Government Center, at 888 Washington Blvd.

Stamford cyclists and other proponents of more bike lanes and amenities in the city said they plan to oppose the neighborhood request because eliminating the lane would harm fledgling efforts to create a larger network of South End and downtown bike-travel lanes to improve the safety and ease of bicycle travel.

"I think to some people this might seem like one small stretch of bike lane, but if we lose this bike lane, some of us feel there is not much hope for Stamford to become a bike-friendly city in the future or an overall more livable and sustainable community," said Meg Dalton, a founder of Bike Stamford.

Arthur Selkowitz, chairman of the Mill River Collaborative, said that the stretch of bike lane is the type of infrastructure the city should not be replacing because it risks alienating younger professionals interested in seeing more bike lanes and multi-use trails to help reduce their automobile use.

"It would be an embarrassment and a shame if the city of Stamford moves backward with respect to creating a more livable city," Selkowitz said. "To convert one of the few existing bike lanes in Stamford to private parking spaces for a few people would be a travesty."

If approved, residents along the western side of Washington Boulevard between Pulaski and Atlantic streets would be able to obtain an annual $10 permit, which would entitle them to one permit for each motor vehicle registered in the zone and six visitor parking permits.

McClean said the sudden replacement of on-street parking with the bicycle lane is somewhat arbitrary and not consistent with alignments farther south on Washington Boulevard within Harbor Point's tax increment financing district and on Pacific Street, two areas where signage and markings to enable bicycling haven't displaced on-street parking, McClean said.

"They didn't seek community input on these decisions so I don't know how they were made," McClean said. "We've had our on-street parking taken away, while there is on-street parking farther south."

Mike Norris, who regularly rides to the South End from his Shippan home on the Stamford Urban Transitway, said the Transitway is one of the few stretches of road in the city where bicyclists can feel relatively confident they can travel safely alongside motor vehicle traffic.

"My hope is the city will actually be more proactive about going out and adding some lanes," Norris said.

Norris said more bike lanes and so-called "sharrow" markings that warn motorists that bicyclists have the right to share their travel lane, are also partial remedies to parking shortages in residential and commercial areas.

"It is not as if bike lanes and sharrows are just for cyclists, they are for people who drive, too," Norris said. "If I ride my bicycle to the Stamford train station, that means somebody else gets my space."